Fringe theatre reviews: Kirsty Mann: Corpse | The Wolf of Poyais | International Aufguss Masters | This Play Shouldn’t Exist (and I was Supposed to Be on Holiday) | Whale Fall or Song to Dance With My Death | Graduatric

Kirsty Mann | Rich Lakos

THEATRE

Kirsty Mann: Corpse ★★★★

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 30 August

The challenge of a ghost story play – and perhaps the reason why there’s not more of them – is that it’s hard to break the perception that it’s just a play, which means nothing that bad can happen, can it? So, it’s particularly impressive that Kirsty Mann, who tells us she’s sometimes a doctor and sometimes a comedian, manages to so effectively blur together what’s real and what isn’t that by the time the show ends you might well still be guessing.

It starts like many a ghost story: with a self-defined middle-class woman, Kirsty, and her fellow doctor husband buy a suspiciously cheap house. As she tells the tale of June, who used to live there and possibly still does, and meets her funny-creepy sister and former carer, who she also plays, the atmosphere shifts from a friendly chat to something more sinister. There are claw marks on the bedroom door, banging on the walls and an oncoming mist about to envelope the garden as well as the audience. We learn that June “wasn’t a nice woman” who “had to be” locked in her room towards the end of her days for her own and possibly everyone else’s safety.

Kirsty claims not to be a good actor, but her characterisation of the people in June’s life and evocation of the house with its many rooms, questionable art and wipe clean furniture suggests otherwise, as does an ongoing joke in which she mixes up an accent. Fabulously timed tricks set the audience off screaming. Kirsty paints herself as a naïve homeowner, but she’s also a self-aware storyteller. Who is she really? Who knows. But the combination of amiable humour and horror is disarming, putting you at ease and making it all the more of a shock when it’s shattered. Sally Stott

THEATRE

The Wolf of Poyais ★★★★

Assembly Roxy (Venue 139) until 30 August

Sir Gregor MacGregor, many of us might need reminding, was the real-life early 19th century British Army officer who invented the Central American country of ‘Poyais’, into which non-existent economy he convinced the great, good and gullible of society to make investments. In today’s money, the bold confidence trickster scammed well over a tenth of a billion pounds with his scheme.

Yet many of the few hundred early ‘settlers’ he convinced to make the long journey to the uninhabitable swamplands of the Mosquito Coast paid with their lives. Playwright Sam Went’s piece, directed by Hector Laszlo Cosmetatos, homes in on this dichotomy, playing the canny rogue off against the narcissistically ruthless operator, both types which hold alarming levels of sway in the world today.

The biography play format so beloved of solo Fringe shows is elevated several levels above the norm here, both by Went’s canny, well-informed writing and by Thom Tuck’s sublime performance as MacGregor. Deploying a very serviceable Scottish accent and a Lord Flashheart-like (for the Blackadder lovers out there) degree of self-regarding mania, Tuck at first bounds across the stage, playing MacGregor as the presenter of an eight-step, modern-day guide to success.

Referring to us as fellow ‘entrepreneurs’, he scrolls through a flipchart which details ever more ruthlessly selfish tips. His character’s furious ascent from officer in the Peninsular War to compatriot of Simon Bolivar during the Venezuelan War of independence is described, all the while casting aspersions over MacGregor’s declared qualifications and level of heroism.

It’s all very madcap and funny, but as the piece progresses and MacGregor’s disregard for human life in the face of profit becomes clear, the jokes begin to dissipate. It’s an interesting and very enjoyable period character study, yet one which doesn’t shy from hammering home one of the nonsensical rules of the current digital economy; just because something doesn't exist, it doesn't mean it can't make money. David Pollock

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THEATRE

International Aufguss Masters ★★★

Sauna Theatre at Summerhall (Venue 26) until 31 August

There is something very “Fringe” about watching world-class sauna masters perform elaborate towel choreography in the UK’s largest sauna. International Aufguss Masters brings the ancient Central European sauna tradition of Aufguss – pouring water over hot stones and ice balls infused with essential oils, circulating the steam with choreographed towels – into Summerhall’s Sauna Theatre.

Aufguss itself is an extraordinary experience, and Masters brings a daily docket of renowned practitioners. On this particular day, Chris Brandenburg’s Death Rider and Chris Shenkle’s Jekyll & Hyde combine elaborate scent journeys with theatrical performances, but the spectacle doesn’t quite land.

The performances are accompanied by soundtracks more suited to reality TV than the drama they’re attempting to evoke. Both masters falter at the peaks of their routines: towels fall, choreography slips and one unfortunate audience member’s face meets a flying towel.

There is something intriguing about the collision of ancient sauna ritual with these kitschy, Joker-adjacent performances, but the result is tonally confusing. A more nuanced theatricality might have served the ritual better.

Still, praise is due for Aufguss itself, and Sauna Theatre’s offerings are plenty. The ritual is absolutely worth experiencing – complete with towel and sauna hat hire, cold beverages and a plunge pool – but perhaps requires some discretion in choosing one's master. Mika Morava

THEATRE

This Play Shouldn’t Exist (and I was Supposed to Be on Holiday) ★★★

Underbelly, Bristo Square (Venue 302) until 28 August

A table, a red radio, an empty fishbowl: Tim Honnef’s stripped-back storytelling opens with a promise – everything he tells us is true. A fish named Marcel the Elephant, we learn, was denied UK entry for not being a support animal. A carrot takes its place; we’re asked to imagine its fish-ness.

Honnef, following his grandfather’s example, insists he’ll never tell an untruth, even as doubt seeds and grows. When he’s branded a liar, he retreats, but then a young fan, Jen, writes asking for help finding her missing mother. The show’s central question surfaces: does it matter if a story is true, if it does what stories are meant to do?

The piece is gentle, radio and voicemail recordings murmuring beneath speech that barely registers, Welsh and Dutch slipping in at the edges. “Coming up with a story is like remembering something that never happened,” he offers. “The moment you start telling it, it happened.”

It’s a lovely concept, though delivered at a pace where there is little space to breathe, be still, or even arrive in the room with him. Honnef insists there’s no metaphor here, only magic, and mostly, charmingly, it is easy to make believe with him. Josephine Balfour-Oatts

THEATRE

Whale Fall or Song to Dance With My Death ★★★

St Cuthbert’s Church (Venue 122) until 27 August

Staged in St Cuthbert’s Church, Bruna Longo begins outside in the graveyard, before leading us into a long room, the audience seated either side. Singing bowls sound as she tells us: her father is dead, not her. Yet, we are meeting a character with her name and her birthdate. Today marks her death-date.

Part funeral, part lecture, part live research, Longo casts herself as both griever and grieved, occasionally breaking the solemnity with playful misdirection – “I forgot something in Brazil, I'll be right back!”

She ranges across mourning practices – Brazilian funeral songs, Batswana death rites, a cremation ritual staged with wood chips and bones – and her sources, though well-chosen, are dense: Tolstoy, Hamlet, near-death experiences, animals tending to their dead, homo sapiens sapiens, the neuroscience of an oxygen-starved brain.

A later sequence sees Longo undressing into a hospital gown, oxygen mask and catheter, where this density becomes keenest; we are performed-at rather than shared-with.

Rigorous in its refusal to resolve grief into a story that is linear or tidy, its plainest lines become luminous: “grief doesn’t diminish with time, it’s life that grows around it,” and put more simply still – “grief is another word for love.” Josephine Balfour-Oatts

THEATRE

Graduatric ★★

theSpace @ Niddry St (Venue 9) and theSpace @ Surgeons Hall (Venue 53) until 29 August

Too much happens between scenes in this two-hander, leaving little space to build empathy for either character. Set in a creative writing postgraduate tutor’s office at a Scottish university, the title blends “graduate” and “geriatric,” setting an uncomfortable tone from the outset. Scots vocabulary can feel like blunt scene-setting, and a Harry Potter poster gestures at transphobia without engaging with the topic deeply. It’s discomforting, though rarely in a way that feels purposeful. A late voicemail message, doubling as a monologue, is arguably the show’s most emotionally grounded moment, but this is diluted by the offhand jokes regarding emotional coping throughout. Josephine Balfour-Oatts

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